It is time for Zorba to start meditating, and it is time for the people who are meditators not to allow themselves to escape from the world... Only in completion is there bliss. Only in completion have you come home.
Osho

Tuesday, 29 April 2014

Who or what do you blame for your anger, hurt, anxiety, depression, guilt or shame? Do you blame a person, God or circumstances? Blaming someone or something outside yourself is one of the causes of unhappiness - it keeps you trapped. Look to your own thoughts and behavior. If you are not being kind to yourself in thoughts and actions, you will be unhappy. Happiness is an inside job.

"Every passion, every emotion has its effect upon the mind, and every change of mind, however slight, has its effect upon man's body."

Hazrat Inayat Khan

Commentary by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan:

Different conditions and the changes that take place in the world have their effect upon the mind, and the different conditions of the mind have their effect upon the body. As bodily illness makes man irritable, confused and exhausted in mind, so different conditions of the mind cause health or illness in the body. The link between the body and the mind is the breath, a link through which the influences of the body and the mind are exchanged and work upon one another.

Every passion, every emotion has its effect upon the mind; and every change of mind, however slight, has its effect upon a man's body... One man is perhaps striving all day to earn his own bread so that he may live in a comfortable manner. Another is always worrying about how to maintain himself and his children. Another is thinking, 'What can I do to save my fellow man from his trouble?' If we compare these people, in order to see who is the greatest, we see that he is greatest whose ideal is greatest.

When we consider that great heroes of the past and present, those whom we admire and to whom we look with hope for right guidance, we shall find that what has made them great has been the greatness of their ideal. The lower the ideal, the less the efforts. The higher the ideal, the greater the life. If we use all our intelligence and strength and wisdom to accomplish some little thing, it is only a waste of life. To consider what great things one can accomplish, to seek to do those things which will be most useful and valuable to others, that is the ideal life. ... Come to the mystic, then, and sit with him when you are tired of all these other remedies that you have employed in vain; come and take a glass of wine with him. The mystic wine is the inner absorption, which removes all the worries and anxieties and troubles and cares of the physical and mental plane. All these are now done away with forever. It is the mystic who is at rest. It is he who experiences that happiness which others do not experience. It is he who teaches the way to attain that peace and happiness which are the original heritage of man's soul.

Friday, 25 April 2014

"Sleep is comfortable, but
awakening is interesting."

Hazrat
Inayat Khan

Commentary by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan:

There are some who are content with a belief taught at home or in church.
They are contented, and they may just as well rest in that stage of
realization where they are contented until another impulse is born in their
hearts to rise higher. The Sufi does not force his belief or his thoughts
upon such souls. In the East, there is a saying that it is a great sin to
awaken anyone who is fast asleep. This saying can be symbolically understood.
There are many in this world who work and do things and are yet asleep; they
seem awake externally, but inwardly, they are asleep. The Sufi considers it a
crime to awaken them, for some sleep is good for their health. The work of
the Sufi is to give a helping hand to those who have had sufficient sleep and
who now begin to stir in their sleep, to turn over. And it is that kind of
help which is the real initiation.

The awakened soul sees all of the doings of adults as the doings of the
children of one father. He looks upon them as the Father would look upon all
human beings on the earth, without thinking that they are German or English
or French. They are all equally dear to him. He looks upon all full of
forgiveness, not only upon those who deserve it, but also upon the others,
for he understands the reason behind it all. By seeing good in everybody and
in everything, he begins to develop that divine light that expands itself,
illuminating the greater part of life and revealing it as a scene of divine
sublimity.

The mystic develops a wider outlook on life, and this wider outlook changes
his actions. He develops a point of view that may be called a divine point of
view. Then he rises to the state in which he feels that all that is done to
him comes from God, and when he himself does right or wrong, he feels that he
does right or wrong to God. To arrive at such a stage is true religion. There
can be no better religion than this, the true religion of God on earth. This
is the point of view that makes a person God-like and divine. He is resigned
when badly treated, but for his own shortcomings, he will take himself to
task, for all his actions are directed towards God.

A person whose soul has awakened becomes awake to everything he sees and
hears. Compared to that person everyone else seems to be with open eyes and
yet not to see, to be with open ears and yet not to hear. There are many with
open ears, but there is rarely one who hears, and there are many with open
eyes, but there is hardly one who sees. ... The moment the soul has awakened,
music makes an appeal to it, poetry touches it, words move it, art has an
influence upon it. It no longer is a sleeping soul, it is awake and it begins
to enjoy life to a fuller extent. It is this awakening of the soul which is
mentioned in the Bible, 'Unless the soul is born again it will not enter the
kingdom of heaven'. Being born again means that the soul is awakened after
having come on earth, and entering the kingdom of heaven means that this
world, the same kingdom in which we are standing just now, turns into heaven
as soon as the point of view has changed.

Is it not interesting and most wonderful to think that the same earth we walk
on is earth to one person and heaven to another? And it is still more
interesting to notice that it is we who change it; we change it from earth
into heaven, or we change it otherwise. This change comes not by study, nor
by anything else, but only by the changing of our point of view.

Wake Up! If you knew for certain you had a terminal illness–if you had little time left to live–you would waste precious little of it! Well, I’m telling you…you do have a terminal illness: It’s called birth. You don’t have more than a few years left. No one does! So be Happy Now, without reason–or you will never be at all.

When you go out into the woods and you look at trees, you see all these different trees. And some of them are bent, and some of them are straight, and some of them are evergreens, and some of them are whatever. And you look at the tree and you allow it. You appreciate it. You see why it is the way it is. You sort of understand that it didn’t get enough light, and so it turned that way. And you don’t get all emotional about It. You just allow it. You appreciate the tree. The minute you get near humans, you lose all that. And you are constantly saying ‘You’re too this, or I’m too this.’ That judging mind comes in. And so I practice turning people into trees. Which means appreciating them just the way they are.

Saturday, 19 April 2014

The heart is the inner face of your life. The human journey strives to make this inner face beautiful. It is here that love gathers within you. Love is absolutely vital for a human life. For love alone can awaken what is divine within you. In love, you grow and come home to your self. When you learn to love and let yourself be loved, you come home to the hearth of your own spirit. You are warm and sheltered.